One of the reasons why this is so much to be desired is from the commercial effect which China may have on the rest of the world. If the vast masses of her singularly excellent workmen are to be exploited by powers who have no thought for either {29} hers or the world's welfare; if the sweated den of the alien is a menace to the healthy conditions of the working man in London; if the policy of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury has been at all beneficial to the world at large, the sudden introduction of hundreds of thousands of ill-paid but efficient working men to the great Western market will have a deleterious effect on the social conditions of the civilised world. It is obviously far more simple to bring the factories to China than to bring the Chinaman to the factories, and this will be freely done if ever the flag of the foreigner waves over China. The great advantages that China can offer of cheap labour, cheap coal and cheap carriage, coupled with the security of a European flag, will have the effect of attracting to China a very large number of the world's industries. If this is done gradually, so that the internal market in China increases proportionally, this will not result in any evil to other nations. China will share in the wealth of the world, and will be at once a large producer and a large consumer; but if before Western civilisation has been assimilated by the working classes Western factories are extensively started in China the result will be one of those dislocations of social conditions which we include under the name of sweating. Western conditions of labour in Western countries may be deemed by some to be hard, but no one can doubt that if Western conditions of labour were forced on a population which did not understand them, they {30} would have a tendency to become definitely oppressive. The Chinese coolie will, I fear, be as little able to maintain his ground against the foreign contractor supported by the arms of a foreign power, as the Congo native is to maintain his rights against his Belgian oppressor; and unless Western powers have the humanity and wisdom to resist those of their own nations who will clamour to make money out of Chinese labour, Western dominance in China is not to be desired by Western wage-earners. [Illustration: HANKOW, THE CHICAGO OF CHINA. RIVER AT LOW WATER, 600 MILES FROM THE SEA. HAN-YANG IRONWORKS]